I know an elderly person who lives in a small house where there was a very,very minor fire. No flames, just smoke.
It was caused by candles left unattended on the dining room table. The candles fell onto the plastic tablecoth, which smouldered, and started to burn the wooden table. The resident homeowner was at home, watching TV in the bedroom. He smelled smoke, got up to investigate, and found a smoky dining room. The fire had put itself out…leaving the table top ruined, blackened with soot , but no other damage of any kind, except smoke.
He went to bed that night and slept with no problems.
The next day he called his insurance company to ask a few questions…and got a huge slap in the face. The insurance company went into full-scale emergency mode.
They declared the house uninhabitable, due to chemical/smoke inhalation dangers. They swiped some kind of special sponge on the walls and said it detected dangerous residue .
The resident says that there is zero visible damage, although there is a definite smell of smoke and “a funny chemical smell”.
The insurance company is now paying big money for 6 weeks of work.
They immediately moved the owner to an apartment (of his own choosing), leaving him with his pyjamas and one set of underwear. Then they packed up the entire contents of the house.First every item of clothing,bedding and drapery was taken out of the closets and sent for special cleaning. Movers boxed up the entire contents of the house and moved it to a special warehouse where it is kept in a pressurized ozone-rich atmoshphere . All the carpeting is being replaced and the walls scraped bare before repainting. All the furniture will be scrubbed and shampooed before returning it to the house. They told the resident that they hope he will be able to live in his house again within 6 weeks.
The owner doesn’t want all the hassles, and he only gave in to their demands because the insurance company insists that the house is a health danger.
The total cost to the homeowner will be his $500 or $1000 deductable. All other expenses are paid for by the insurance company.
My questions are:
Is this overkill ?
Is this the standard treatment for a house fire, no matter how minor?
How much smoke does it take to damage a house, by insurance standards?
The only thing that burned was a (smoldered) plastic tablecloth and a charred wooden table top. How much smoke can that produce? Not long ago, it was common to smoke cigarettes , and a party with 20 quests would probably produce more smoke than this fire.
As for smell–nowadays, when most houses and all offices are smoke-free,just one or two cigarettes ruins a house for me, because I can’t stand the smell. But I wouldn’t pay tens of thousands of dollars to strip the house–I would just air our the house for a few days.
Why is the insurance company so willing to pay for all this, when the homeowner does not ask for it?
We’re hearing second-hand information which was told to you by someone who is elderly. My first reaction is that there very well could be significant story elements missing here. When people tell stories, we tend to forget, or gloss over, certain details.
However, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard stories about houses getting major renovation after a relatively minor fire. A similar thing happened to my sister. I wasn’t there and I don’t know the details but there was a lot of talk about smoke damage even though the house was still intact.
As for dangerous soot… several years ago I took a class on Forensic Locksmithing and they said that a very common situation is that a car has been burned beyond recognition and the insurance company wants to know if the ignition lock had been damaged before the car was torched or if it was started with a key. The instructor emphasized the fact that car fires produce dangerous soot and the forensic locksmith MUST wear a mask to avoid breathing it when collecting evidence. So maybe your friend’s insurance company is right and there’s a case of black lung waiting to happen because of the toxic soot lining the walls of his house.
Eight years ago, our RV caught fire while we were driving it. We pulled over and got out of the RV very quickly. I went back inside to try (unsuccessfully) to put out the fire. I refused to let my spouse (who has asthma) go back inside the RV at all. Nonetheless, my spouse ended up in the E.R. having trouble breathing the next day.
Smoke from certain chemicals can be very dangerous. There was a fire in a beauty supply store located in a strip mall in my town. While there was only smoke damage to the 7-eleven in the mall, the store had to be sprayed with a chemical so dangerous that the people using it had to wear hazmat suits.
“Just smoke” can be worse than actual fire damage. The fact that the initial damage was to a plastic tablecloth is probably what set the insurance company on edge.
Had they paid out to simply air out the hour and replace the table, they would fear looking at a future lawsuit in which the current or a future resident blamed them for not appropriately handling all the toxins released into the air and absorbed by the walls, floor, and ceiling, to be re-released back into the atmosphere, endangering the health (and, perhaps, life), of that resident.
I obviously do not know which particular “plastic” melted and was evaporated, but there are a great many noxious toxins associated with all sorts of plastics.
When my parents’ attached garage caught fire, the only damage to the house was smoke and they were not permitted, (by either the fire marshal or the insurance company), to stay in the house until the interior was completely re-done. (And that was 45 years ago, when some of the burning plastics issues were far less well known.)
It is very much a pain in the ass to have to go through the procedure, but the fire victim should just be glad that he had sufficient insurance and that the insurance company is ethical enough to cover the work.
When I was a kid, we had a house fire that was similarly mostly smoke. And, like your friend, we were forced to evacuate (although we didn’t get an apartment or hotel room; don’t know if Mom refused it or her policy didn’t cover it. She went to her parent’s house and I spent a couple of weeks at a neighbor’s house so I could get to school every day.)
Everything came out. My books, my toys…most of my stuffed dolls and animals were tossed, unsalvageable. I remember the man from the insurance agency asking me if there was one special stuffed toy that I really loved, and they would try very hard to clean it, but that everything else had to go. He was a really nice guy, and they did indeed save my ragdoll Carrie. But for years afterward, we’d randomly discover things that were missing, presumed “lost in the fire.”
The only room that sustained any damage at all from flame was the one the furnace was in (the fire started because of a faulty solenoid switch that didn’t turn the furnace off when it should have.) But every room was cleaned, steamed and repainted. The carpets were steamcleaned several times. The clothes and towels and sheets and curtains were all taken away for cleaning. The pillows all had to be replaced. The cats had to spend the night at the vet, and the next day they had to be cleaned to get the smoke out of their fur.
Smoke damage is no small stuff. And yes, we were also told that smoke damage is actually worse, in terms of health risks and property damage, than fire damage.
I used to work for an insurance company (auto liability), and I’m assuming the answer is that they’re afraid of getting sued at some point. That figure paying for the reno is cheaper than losing a potential lawsuit for failing to repair damages, or a bad faith claim.
It was like this foe car seats in California. If a car seat was in use, or the owner says it was damaged, we’d replace it. No matter how minimal the accident, or how much you’re sure the person on the other end is being shady, didn’t matter. Being out a thousand dollars is much better than a car seat failing in the future, putting a child at risk. One, I would not want to have to live with that. Two, can you imagine a trial where the big bad insurance company refused a “reasonable” request and a kid got hurt? What would a jury think?
But for years afterward, we’d randomly discover things that were missing, presumed “lost in the fire.”